Lecture on Post-Modernism, April 14

Key Points:

• post-modernism involved questioning contemporary views
• Post-modernism came about through the Vietnam war
• those that couldn't affort college were drafted
• It was all about opinions and the ambiguousness of them.
• new wave type
• Wolfgang weingart
• Rosmiere Tissi and Siegfried Odermatt were very influential post-modernists.
• Paula Scher - "Art can only be repetitious".
• use of imagery and contradictory wording to cause audience to think.
• deconstruction
• Derrida
• David Carson "disturbing the audience"
• late 80s, with the Mac home computers, brought about more type
• making type became a fad and influential movement
• Fontography
• Use of pop-culture references to force views.
• culture jam "citational grafts"
• obsession with human body
• Extreme liberalism

Why is post-modernism important? Plainly put, it's the world we live in. The lecture tonight concerning post-modernism was a reflection of the last centuries, and the movements that brought us to today's artificial world, which is mainly about sharing opinions and being plastered by stereotypes and advertisements. Post-modernism was a break-through because things can be either conventional or liberal, it is all a matter of opinion and self-expression. Artists featured today made strong marks on human thinking, as well as causing us to question the world we live in.  What is reality and what isn't? It's all a matter of deconstruction and how we look at it. That's post-modernism.

Discourse 2

Claudia Klees
Previous posting: March 5th, 2010
"discourse 1 pt 2,Television Did it First: Ten Myths about ‘New’ Media."

April 7, 2010

Key Points:

• Paul Rand develops identities in a non-traditional way. 
• Rather than using rational logic to compose his work, he went out to ride his bike to come up with ideas.
• The time period was largely known for its need for identity.
• Every brand needed an identity.
• Lois started using covers and designs that irked the viewers and therefore made a bigger impression.
• Swiss design = rational logic and clear.
• Post modernism.
• Las Vegas is a hub for post modernism.
• Post Modernism and its development.

Today’s lecture regarding the branding age and post-modernism is important for a design student, as it opens one’s eyes to how design influenced culture and which things proved themselves as successful. The ways brand designers developed their ideas and success. Post-modernism is important because it emphasized a freedom of expression, including architecture and design. Can one apply one's ideals to design and architecture, if so, how would your self-expression manifest itself?

McLuhan’s Tetrad

iPod Touch, iPhone

1. 
   
   
   What human trait or experience does the medium enhance?
   The iPod touch and the iPhone enhance our lives through the usage of applications, as well as music. In fact, iPods, which were originally just designed to play music like any other media or mp3 player, have developed into a single tool for multiple purposes such as the usage of applications for daily life – from flashlights to rulers – all sorts of smaller tools can be contained in this one tool known as the iPod touch or iPhone. The iPhone has the additional functionality of a phone or small camera. Despite that it is called an ‘iPhone’, the phone functionality is secondary only to the applications.

2. 
   
   
   What Pre-existing technology, method, system, or medium does this medium obsolesce?
   The iPhone seems like some sort of innovation that tries to become a monopoly by itself. The smart phone, which partially replaced the generic cell phone, which mostly replaced the home phone, which again replaced the morse code-based telegraph, has become a competition to prior inventions contained in its apps, which include innovations such as calculators, GPS(which have mostly replaced paper maps) and flash lights. One can also browse the Internet with an iPhone or iPod Touch’s ‘Safari’ web browser, which also ships in it’s full version on Mac OS X. MP3 players, of which the iPod originally was one, have also replaced CDs for the most part (and usually when one buys a CD it ends up on an MP3 player anyways). Included software such as iTunes has become very strong, and probably will end up consuming such things as local CD and music stores. (By the way, CDs have previously consumed audio tapes, which again replaced the music record.)
   
   
3. 
   
   
   What technology, method, system or medium that was previously obsolesced or abandoned does this medium retrieve?
   The iPod Touch and the iPhone both bring back vintage or even ‘obsolete’ innovations – just in digital form. For instance, there are various applications that emulate the use of an abacus or an ancient sun-based compass, which have both become obsolete.
   
   
4. 
   
   
   When fully utilized or pushed to its extreme, what will the medium reverse into?
   Imagine the iPhone or iPod running out of battery. All the tools that are on this ‘digital swiss knife’ end up dying with it (until you recharge it, that is). So if a person becomes solely dependent on this tool, and neglects packing the tools it replaced, the person will be left helpless. This is a dangerous thing. Imagine getting lost somewhere in the wild with nothing but food, water, and an iPhone. You then find out that the iPhone is dead. Not only do you have no access to the tools contained in it, but its original functionality – a phone – is not available to you, either! You better end up having a good amount of traditional survivor knowledge (If the dependency on modern-day technology hasn’t handicapped you too much, that is).

Conclusion:

The iPhone and iPod Touch have become very useful, yet potentially destructive, innovations. When they first came out I didn’t like them, but fate decided I should own them anyways. Fact is that these inventions by Apple might seem very useful, but the lesser-seen reality is that these inventions can bring about a problem of potential dependency, which can get in the way of basic survival. Therefore, from a very extreme view, they can be fatal to individuals -- and from an even more extreme view-- they can be fatal to human civilization as we know it(just like the Internet). What will happen once those batteries run out?

Discourse 1 pt 2

Television Did it First: Ten Myths about ‘New’ Media.

• Television will most likely not become forgotten.
• People seek more to be on television than internet.
• ‘Virtual Reality’ is just a new form of ‘escapist’ comedy.
• TV is an easier escape from reality
• TV viewers have a short attention span, like those on the internet.
• Broadcast news TV was ‘kinetic’ in order hook viewers, like internet.
• ‘Reality TV’ has been around for a while.
• The usage of ‘hyperlinked’ story telling was already evident in soap operas.
  ‘Tune in tomorrow’.
• ‘Real-time transmission’ allows people to ‘experience’ history in the making, but that’s been around since Edward R. Murrow who transmitted real-time shows.
• Chat rooms offer a new way to connect and build social groups with people, yet talk shows ‘did that first’.
• Both TV and web advertising is annoying.
• Things we are celebrating about internet was scolded on TV.
  
  
  
  
  
  This article here sounded mainly like a rant of an a person who is afraid on the new Internet. The essay went over ten ‘myths’ about how new media isn‘t ‘that new after ’, and argued why the television ‘did all of these things first‘. Amongst the examples given, he pointed out that  ‘virtual reality’, which is seen as new technology to emerge a person into a different, visual, world, has been around for a while through sitcoms such as I Dream of Jeanie or Bewitched, which offered a ‘break’ from the daily life by emerging oneself in a world full of fantasy, yet still very real. Amongst other things, the author also pointed out that ‘kinetic content’ has been around a long time to grab attention on television, just like the internet. Amongst many examples of needing dynamic, moving, content on television to convey information were news. He emphasized that news would be ‘boring’ to the viewer had they not such things as special effects and extreme camera angles. One of the examples given to prove this was 60 Minutes News which aired on CBS since 1968. This does, however, bring up an ethical question ‘do we watch news for their content or their special effects with the content?‘‘ Would the news be interesting by themselves? ‘Or would they, perhaps, simply fail at feeling the hungry audience?‘ One needs to answer these questions alone, however, we can not deny the fact that ‘users’ have short attention spans, whether it be television or the net.

Discourse 1

Looking Closer Four: Critical Writings on Graphic Design

Movie Titles: Much Ado about Little

by Peter Hall

• Majority of movies don't have memorable title sequence.
• Titles can cast a revealing like on film history
• Focus shifted from memorable movie titles to commercials and environmental signage.
• Everything has been done before
• Nothing new.
• Typography can influence audience
• Directors are designers, too
• Focus should be more on the movie’s design, not the movie’s title.

The article discusses wrong usage of packaging and posters, which convey the right and wrong message. The poster for “The Ice Storm” actually catches what the movie is really about, while the one for Dr.Moreau is somewhat misleading, even if the design is more attention-getting. The title is also not very explanatory, another thing he criticizes: off-the-wall titles. The article heavily criticizes wrong displayal in packaging and too much focus on the design of the logo, rather than the typography contained within the movie. I have also chosen Mission: Impossible, as the typography has actually built an identity for it, and also a creative name identity, which actually works well and is not off-the-wall.

March 3, 2010. Modernism, Cubism, and WWII propaganda

Key Points:

• Sabon is a Garamond rip-off.
• Zwart created unusually arresting layouts
• Post Cubism and Art Deco
• Paul Renner created Futura, which is THE Art Deco typeface.
• Futura’s round Os were perfect circles.
• Stylistic fantasies
• Modernism was everywhere.
• Mikestone: Dubinnet, showed a drink becoming part of someone.
• Modernism still has major influence nowadays.
• Visual Persuasion
• ‘Flight’(1916) first cubist ad poster.
• Synthetic Cubism
• ‘Imitation is the best form of flattery’...
• WWII Propaganda
• German art absorbed cubism, french ad art, lettering, type, and Russian contructionism.
• Ludwig Hohlwein
• Olympic games became propaganda event for Nazi Germany.
• 1942- Abrahan Games, Jean Carle, Bayer
• New approaches to Plakastil by combining it with photography.
• Usage of fear and uncertainty through images.
• Mythical Realism: Promoted patriotism at all levels of society through national symbols, fall of realism.
• Europeans took advantage of photographs, Americans used stereotypes.
• Spring Dance, usage of sexuality to demoralize the enemy.
• Platastil + Photos = usage of photomontages.
• Swiss graphic design.
• While the rest of the world was at war, the Swiss were busy making ski ads.
• Swiss developed the modern International Typographic Style.

Today, part of the class revolved around art-deco modernism and the other part revolved around WWII propaganda. The propaganda focused on differences between Nazi propaganda, Russian, and American propaganda, and the usage of fear to manipulate the masses. One can see different sides of the issue and the abuse of events like the olympics for such things as propaganda. These things should be a warning sign as well as a sensor to detect things like this in the near future. We saw the developments in art-deco and two of the favorite typefaces still in use today: Futura and Sabon. The things shown are even moreso important as designers to be aware of such things as manipulation and unethical advertising.